Today, for the first time in a while, I tuned into morning TV. On CNBC, ex-Fed governor Fred Mishkin was warning against Ron Paul’s “dangerous” audit the Fed bill, and indeed any circumscription of the central bank and its supposed independence. That is actually independence from congress, not the presidency, of course. He credited the Fed with preventing the worst depression in history, without any evidence. He even described all of America beyond NY and DC as “the hinterlands.” I did like his reference to Andrew Jackson’s “killing” of that proto-Fed, the Second Bank of the United States, which continues to chill all the bad guys.
On MSNBC, a reporter was giggling with Obama over his jeans, but he desrcribed himself as something of a frump. “Why, until a few years ago, I only had four suits.” Ohhh. On Morning Government, Joe, his voice rising to basso-stentorian, was chastising Michael Steele over the “health care” bill. Why don’t the Republicans have their own plan? “Medicare and Medicaid are going broke!!!!” “‘We’ must rein in costs, or they will break the economy.”
Now, when has government ever reined in costs? When has it ever worried about costs? The government loves to spend. It exists to spend. Spending, any spending, helps the economy, they tell us. And Medicare and Medicaid can’t go bankrupt, anymore than the Pentagon can go bankrupt, unfortunately. Does Joe ever worry about vast and rising Pentagon spending, and merchant-of-death prices continually going up? Whenever the government and the government media are chanting about rising prices, it is propaganda to get the people to go along with an expansion of the state. That was true with Bush’s failed “privatization” (i.e., forced savings) to save Social Security from bankruptcy (again, government programs can’t go bankrupt), and it’s true of Obama’s attempted publicization of the rest of the medical sector.
7:44 am on July 21, 2009
